Mars

We recently celebrated the Fiftieth anniversary of our “Giant Leap” trip to the moon.  Watching the CBS coverage of the event was informative but the commentators, while they were impressed by the accomplishment, they were also asking what is next?  Mars was the logical answer.  Fifty years later we have not been back to The Moon and Mars is only referenced in movies and John Gray books. Our country also pays lip service to other important items like gender equality.   This week we will examine why these struggles continue and hopefully break the glass ceiling once and for all.  The solution seems obvious but we must be missing something.  The items we have identified will be discussed and hopefully they can solve this issue and we can move on!  It should be easier than going to Mars.

Teachers

I recently spent time with a family friend who has recently retired from teaching.  I asked her how we could improve our education system and she did not hesitate to answer.  She believes we need to quit evaluating teachers and students based on the state test!  Sounds like wealth advisors and clients who evaluate themselves by market performance.  There is so much more to what good teachers and wealth advisors provide. My friend also confirmed the funding and compensation challenges we are aware of but never address.  I heard Martians feel underpaid too. Maybe subscription pricing can help. 

Business Model Built By Men

Most of our institutions were but they built by men.  That reality is depicted in the recent documentary Maiden about the first all female sailing crew.  Spoiler alert…they did well and the skipper commented that she wished reporters would ask her the same questions they asked the men.  The tactics her team used were the same as the men and unfortunately the reporters were more concerned about how the female team got along. Hopefully the wealth management industry can learn from sailing and evaluate all of their professionals using the same criteria. Men are not from Mars and Women are not from Venus.  Ellevate and their clients have proven that our bias can go both ways and taking an all male or all female approach doesn’t always connect with clients.  The Maiden Crew was correct.

Job Satisfaction

If we take our gender bias out of the equation and build a company with true diversity we can all win.  Our hope is that we complement our diversity metrics with job satisfaction metrics. The few firms who have implemented a job satisfaction and diversity metric have been pleasantly surprised by how happy their professionals are and by low their employee turnover.  Low employee turnover is correlated with low client turnover.  Sounds like a win win to us. 

While Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos want to visit Mars.  We need to accept we are all are from the same planet and begin to improve our planet first before running off to Mars.